The Education Ministry is down to two private contenders in the race to build four schools for $200 million before 2018.

The tender process for building Aranui Community School and Rolleston Secondary School in Canterbury, Queenstown's Wakatipu High School, and a yet-to-be-announced Auckland school is down to companies Investec and Future Schools.

The Canterbury and Auckland schools are scheduled to open in January 2017, followed by Wakatipu High in January 2018.

Ministry head of infrastructure Kim Shannon said the four schools were to be built using a public-private partnership procurement model. The building design, construction and financing would be the responsibility of a private team of sponsors, builders, architects, and facilities managers.

The contract for the successful tender would include property maintenance for 25 years, "leaving school leaders to focus on raising student achievement".

In other state schools, the school itself was responsible for property maintenance.

"Based on national and international experience and lessons learnt from the ministry's first PPP at Hobsonville Pt primary and secondary schools, we expect the second partnership has an estimated cost savings of between 2 per cent to 8 per cent over the 25-year period," Shannon said.

The ministry estimated the cost of construction and maintenance for the project to be more than $200m, paid to the private partner quarterly, with this payment reduced if the school facilities did not meet the standards specified in the contract.

She was "delighted" with the high quality of tenderers, who would proceed to the next stage.

Investec is sponsored by Investec, with construction by Naylor Love Construction, Opus Architecture as the lead designer, and facilities management provided by Spotless Facilities.

Future Schools is sponsored by Morrisons, with construction by Hawkins Group, ASC Architects as the lead designer, and facilities management provided by Programmed Facility Management.